Having shared the map Eileen Soper drew of her own garden in a recent post I made the same comment again – about how much I love a map in a book.

That got me thinking that I should then scan as many maps as I could find in my books and share them here – a sort of celebration of the book map.

Before I got the scanner set up, though, I thought I’d better check the blog’s media gallery as I would probably have scanned some of them already, to go along with reviews.

Well, it turns out that I’ve already shared most of the maps I have! The only glaring lack is the Lone Pine Books, but those books have so many maps between them that I’m going to save them for their own post. So for now, here’s a reminder of all the maps I’ve already shared – plus a few new ones.

Kirrin

It’s a shame that there were rarely maps in Blyton’s books – and never endpaper maps. How I’d have loved a map of Kirrin and Smuggler’s Top and the Valley of Adventure and so on. Though I can see how putting a map containing secret passages at the start of these books might spoil the story somewhat. Perhaps a map of the general area at the start then a map of, or a map including, the secret passages could come at the end?

Anyway, what we have instead are later impressions of Kirrin. This one I shared very recently as it is from the New Famous Five book, Five and the Forgotten Treasure. It doesn’t match with my mental image of Kirrin, but as we never had a Blyton-approved map we’ll never know how accurate or not accurate this is.

We also have this full-colour one from The Famous Five Everything you ever wanted to know, bu Norman Wright. This is somewhat closer to my mental picture but some things are still in the wrong place.

The Cherrys

I assume all the Cherry books by Will Scott had a map at the front but again I have to grumble about how I only have two of them as they are so hard to find (and afford!).

This first one is from The Cherrys to the Rescue.

And this is from The Cherrys’ Famous Case.

Adventure Island

The Adventure Island books by Helen Moss always have a map at the front. Every adventure takes place on the island so the maps are pretty similar, though new places are added as the children discover them. Some stay on the map but others only appear when they are relevant.

This is the one on Helen Moss’ website, hence the lack of the big line down the middle where the pages meet. And here is the one from The Mystery of the Cursed Ruby, which is number 5. As you can see there are a few less details. (As a bonus the map is printed with a gap in the middle so that nothing is lost in there!)

Most Unladylike Maps

Murder Most Unladylike has a map of Deepdean, Daisy and Hazel’s school.

Book two (Arsenic for Tea) has a map of Fallingford, Daisy’s home where their second murder mystery occurs.

There’s even a map – or perhaps more accurately – a diagram of the train from book 3, First Class Murder. I listened to the audiobook of this so I missed out on this helpful diagram of who was in which room.

I also listened to the audiobook of the first Ministry of Unladylike Activity book, so I missed out on the three (!) map pages of Elysium Hall, which also would have been helpful seeing as solving the murder largely hinged on working out who was where in the house during a blackout.

It appears that all the books have maps, but I will stick with the ones I have read for now.

And the rest

Milly Molly Mandy has a map of her village with helpful annotations on who lives where.

And of course Eileen Soper’s own garden map.